News, articles and information about Jewish art, architecture, and historic sites. This blog includes material to be posted on the website of the International Survey of Jewish Monuments (www.isjm.org).

Happy Birthday Irwin Chanin (1891-1988)Today is the birthday of New York famed architect and real estate developer Irwin S. Chanin, whose company designed and built the Century
and Majestic apartment towers on Central Park West, and the Chanin Building
on 42nd Street among many other New York landmarks. These Art Deco and Art Moderne towers are
among the finest and most-loved skyscrapers in the city (certainly loved
by me). They helped define the modernism of the city for several
generations.

Chanin was a one of small group of adventurous Jewish New York architects such as Eli Jacques Kahn and developers like Abe
N. Adelson who pioneered Art Deco and Art Moderne towers in the city. Irwin and his accountant brother Henry began the Chanin Construction Company in 1919. Two other brothers, Sam and Aaron, were also involved in the company, but to a lesser degree. This type of family business recalls that of Albert Kahn and his brothers in Detroit.

David Dunlap celebrated Chanin's achievement in the New York Times obituary he wrote when Irwin died in 1988 at the age of 96.

Irwin S. Chanin, an architect and builder whose
skyline signature was formed of jazzy Art Deco towers and whose legacy
to Broadway was a half dozen elegant theaters, died of natural causes
Wednesday at his Manhattan home, his family said. He was 96 years old.

Mr.
Chanin was the president and founder of the Chanin family enterprises
that built some of New York's most eye-catching structures in the late
1920's and early 30's. The Chanins helped make popular a streamlined,
geometric, modernistic style of architecture.

In that exuberant
vein were the Chanin Building, a 56-story office skyscraper at 122 East
42d Street, and two twin-towered stuctures that epitomize Central Park
West: the Century Apartments, between 62d and 63d Streets, and the
Majestic Apartments, between 71st and 72d Streets.

The Chanins had
earlier made a name for themselves on Broadway by building six
legitimate theaters: the 46th Street, Biltmore, Mansfield (now the
Brooks Atkinson), Theatre Masque (now the Golden), Royale and Majestic.
They also built New York's ultimate movie palace, the Roxy. Modern City
in Theatrical Terms

According to Dunlap, Chanin was born in Brooklyn, but "in his youth, his family left Bensonhurst to return to Poltava,
Russia, from which his father, Simon, had emigrated. In 1907, the Chanin
family returned to this country." Chanin graduated from Cooper Union in 1915. Cooper Union named its school of architecture his honor in 1981.

USA: 1920s Synagogues Highlight Hartford's Early Jewish Architects and Changing Synagogue Designby Samuel D. Gruber(ISJM) A visit to Hartford, Connecticut last week allowed me to quickly revisit three imposing 1920s North End synagogues. It has been twenty years since my last look and I'm glad to see that all three buildings remain intact, in use and well maintained. All three are interesting as good examples of how and where American Eastern European Jews were heading toward to a more public architecture in the years after World War I, thus joining the Reform movement in the insertion (and assertion) of Judaism into the official American religious landscape.

The siting of two of the three synagogues - Agudus Achim and Emanuel - across from a major urban park are part of national movement the saw the location of synagogues in prominent places where they could easily have been civic monuments, like libraries or museums. This trend already began in the1890s, with the erection of the Reform Temple Beth El and the Portuguese (Sephardi) Orthodox Shearith Israel facing Central Park in New York. But perhaps this point is best made in St. Louis, Missouri, where the former Byzantine-style United Hebrew Synagogue, built in 1924 on the edge of Forest Park, is now the Missouri History Museum Library and Research Center. (Thanks to Google maps and satellite photos it is now easier to locate old synagogues in their larger geographic contexts, something most historians have failed to do).

St. Louis, MO. former United Hebrew Synagogue, 1924.

Two of the three Hartford buildings are also of note because they highlight Hartford's Jewish architects who flourished during this period.

Architect and engineer Maurice H. Golden (1898-1976) was the first Jewish architect in the city doing business in Hartford as Golden, Storrs & Company. According to the research of David F. Ransom, Golden was born in Odessa (then Russia, now Ukraine) and emigrated through Winnipeg, Canada before arriving in Hartford in 1919. He later served as a captain in the U.S. Army during World War II. In addition tor residential and commercial buildings, he designed the State Police Headquarters in Hartford, the library of the University of Hartford, and several high schools. In 1926 he submitted a design for Hartford's Agudas Achim (Agudas Achim Anshei Sefard) and these were published, but then the congregation switched to (also Jewish) architects Julius Berenson (dates unknown) and Jacob Moses (1884-1956). But in 1929 Golden's design for Adath Israel Synagogue in Middletown was built.

Berenson and Moses mostly built houses in Hartford's north End and South End between World War I and the Great Depression. This was typical of most Jewish architects of their generation who could not easily break into public architecture, except with Jewish clients. In this way they buitl two synagogues for Orthodox congregations, both of which are still standing. Both draw on traditional round-arched Romanesque motifs. Beth Hamedrash Hagadol, opened in 1922, also uses the still-popular two-tower facade motif.Beth Hamedrash Hagadol is the more traditional in architecture and liturgy. Its round-arch style with prominent corner towers would have been familiar, since several other two-towered Romanesque-inspired synagogues already existed in Hartford. The city's first synagogue, a Reform temple built for congregation Beth El, designed by local architect George Keller in 1876 (after the congregation rejected New york Jewish architect Henry Fernbach as too expensive), had two prominent towers surmounted by cupolas. The Orthodox Ados Israel was similarly designed by the Irish immigrant architect Michael O'Donohue in 1898. Other Connecticut Orthodox congregations built their synagogues with impressive facade towers. B'nai Jacob (1912, demolished 1962) and Beth Israel Synagogue (1925), both in New Haven, had twin towers. The practice had been imported from Europe in the mid-19th century, where the double towers often distinguished synagogue from churches, but may also have represented the two columns of Salomon's Temple. Whatever the origins, in the third quarter of the19th-century it was the norm of the day for many Reform Congregations, and by the 20th century designers of Orthodox synagogues were copying the style.

Inside, Beth Hamedrash Hagadol
had a traditional East European Orthodox arrangement of a long
rectangular space flanked by women's' galleries leading to a separate
bimah (but close to the Ark wall and an ornate Ark set before a painted
wall pieced by a large wheel window above the Ark. The mural was surely
interesting (I don't know if it still exists). It represented unusual
themes; "the road the heaven" to the left of the Ark, and "Noah's Ark"
on the right.

In their next synagogue, designed for congregation Agudas Achim when they replaced Maurice Golden
as architect, Berenson and Jacobs created a facade not to dissimilitude
from Hamedrash Hagadol, with the same square squat corner towers
flanking a triple arched entrance way. In this work, however, the
treatment of the flank is more sophisticated and robust, in part no
doubt because the synagogue corner location made this facade equally
visible to passersby. The synagogue may also something to the OrthodoxKodimoh Synagogue, built in nearby Springfield, Ma, built in1921-23,

At Agudas
Achim, the towers are compressed and almost vestigial, and the form
draws on popular contemporary Byzantine and Art Deco massing. David F.
Ransom also sees echoes of the contemporary Colonial Revival style in
the side-elevation fenestration, and in the use of white trim for the
windows and horizontal string courses. Inside, the roughly square sanctuary had galleries for women on three sides and an open cupola over the center of the hall. The Ark was within a large arched niche on a stage-like platform which seems also to have served as the bimah (but I have not seen photos of the entire inter when the building was a synagogue), an indication of acceptance by the Romanian congregation of center modern practices.

Emanuel Synagogue was Hartford's first Conservative congregation. Founded in 1919, the congregation worshiped in a former church until they built their new synagogue on Greenfield Street in 1928, on the same block with the recently completed Agudas Achim. The new congregation had grown rapidly with its appeal as a "Jewish Modern Synagogue." Emanuel was Hartford's largest synagogue when it opened for the high holidays in 1927, with a seating capacity of 1,000. The two neighboring share a lot in their design. Both are big brick block-like buildings on corner lots with nearly square sanctuary spaces and both are emphasized by triple doorways on the facade and impressive windows on the flank. But inside the experience would have been quite different as the large Emanuel had no galleries and was surmounted by a low dome encompassing the entire space. The congregation faced one direction, toward a stage-like bimah in a recession in the Ark wall.

.Golden, Berenson and Moses were not the only Jewish architects practicing in Connecticut during the interwar years. Adolph Feinberg, an immigrant from Austria, also worked in Hartford, and he designed the (former) Tefereth Israel Synagogue in New Britain in 1925 and Beth David Synagogue in West Hartford. Also in 1925, Joseph Weinstein of New Haven designed Beth Israel Synagogue in that city. Nathan Myers, who was based in Newark, New Jersey, designed Beth El Synagogue in Waterbury in 1929.

Thanks to Lisa Kassow, Robert Kirschbaum and Peter AaronWhile visiting Trinity College last week to give a lecture for the Jewish Studies Program, I had the pleasure of visiting the The Zachs Hillel House, one of the most attractive Hillels I've seen in my travels. There is a long tradition of creating distinctive - and distinctively modern - Hillel Houses. In the early decades of Hillel several talented young architects such as Max Abramovitz and Sidney Eisenshtat cut their teeth with Hillel commissions. In the 1990s Harvard alumni were able to engage star architect Moshe Safdie to design their Rosovsky Hall a substantial and formal building.

At Trinity, the more modest Zachs Hillel house fits in well on its residential street, keeping the narrow form of the neighboring wood-frame houses, though rising a story higher. The dynamic roof line creates a special look - but one not at odds with the high-gabled neighboring houses. It is a good lesson that contextual architectural does not have to be slavishly imitative.

Designed by Boston-based architects Leers Weinzapfel Associates, with Natasha Espada as lead architect, it opened in 2001. The $2.8
million facility was made possible through the generosity of Henry Zachs
’56 and family. The building sits on a tight urban residential lot and packs a lot into its 8,000 square-feet space. There is a functional basement (with a ping
pong table, pool table and TV and home theater system), and two stories above ground, with the upper story that houses the multipurpose prayer space built at double height. The house boasts a complete kosher kitchen, a large dining room, a library, a
recreational area, a living room, and several smaller meeting rooms.

The front of the house facing the campus is open and public, while
the rear facing the neighborhood is more enclosed. This means that the building really has two entrances, but unforeseen by the architects, most students using the building enter from the rear - not the street. They enter directly into the dining room (perhaps intentionally) rather than the cozy book-lined sitting room, which was designed as a welcoming space.

The most impressive space is a large multipurpose room for prayer, lectures, and other
gatherings on the second floor. This is reached by a long staircase. The room is beautifully finished in cherry wood, and is open and inviting. Seating is flexible and
all the furniture is portable. In the early evening when I was visited, the fading light was beautiful. According Lisa Kassow, Director of Hillel, it is even more magnificent in
the late afternoon when students, staff and community gather for Kabbalat Shabbat services. According to Kassow:

Often,
there are very dramatic shadows created by light coming through the
slats on the upper sections of the tall windows.
The room becomes a magnificent space of natural light and shadow
painted in intensely warm cherry and pine wood tones. Grey translucent
window shades create muted silhouettes of the tree tops and buildings
around us. I often think of it as a beautiful Sukkah
in a tree house, which was the inspiration for the Mizrach art piece
that hangs on the wall facing east which says
- ופרוש עלינו סוכת שלוםSpread over us a shelter of peace- from the Hashkiveinu prayer in the evening service.

Whether intentional or not. the position of the space is in an ancient tradition (the Talmud recommends that a synagogue be high), best experienced in the historic upper level synagogues of Italy. Today, the practice is less common, but it been wonderfully executed by architect Carol Ross Barney in Evanston, Illinois for the Evanston Reconstructionist Synagogue.

When I visited and wrote about that synagogue in 2010, I didn't know about the Hartford Hillel, which predates it, and is prescient in its placement of the well-windowed worship space high high among the trees. The wood finish of the interior walls and the expert wood cabinetry of the Ark and readers' table, made in 2005 by Mark Leue of Williamsburg, Massachusetts bring the natural element indoors.

Artist and Trinity College Professor Robert Kirschbaum and his work Squaring the Temple on the Zachs Hillel House stairway. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2014

One approaches the second story mufti-purpose worship space by a steep stairway that is a dramatic note of the interior space. It has been used accordingly for art exhibits and even the performance of a Purimspiel. Today a series of works on paper, three etchings
in the series Squaring the Mount by artist Robert Kirschbaum who teaches at Trinity, hangs on one wall. The theme of the work - the changing architectural emphasis on the Temple Mount, expressed through pure geometry shapes - coincides nicely with the lines of the Hillel building, and its historic purposes. I was glad to sense this even before Bob sent me his own explanation of work, from which I quote just a part:

The etchings depict the plan of the Temple Mount as it
exists today, a form largely unchanged since the Herodian era (67 BCE to 70
CE). Each print contains the
rectangular plan of one of the historical phases of the Temple: Squaring the Mount,#2 delineates Solomon’s
Temple, #3, the Hasmonean-era Second
Temple, and #4, Herod’s Temple. A square equal in area to each of these
rectangles is also constructed; and there is an indication for the position of
the Foundation Stone -- considered the axis mundi, the site of Abraham’s altar,
and the central point of the Temple’s inner sanctum (the Holy of Holies). So, one can “read” each image right to
left: On the right, the plan of the
Mount and a version of the Temple. In
the center, the process by which each is transformed into a square. On the left, the resulting squares in a concentric
array, each respectively encircled. The
circles are re-struck in the right-hand panels, using the foundation stone as
their center, completing the cycle.

I am honored to have my prints installed in the Zachs
Hillel House, the locus of Jewish communal and spiritual life at Trinity
College. It seems appropriate that they
are located on a lintel situated between the more secular communal areas of the
building’s first floor, and the sanctuary above. They are most often viewed from the
stairwell, as one rises, or descends, from one “realm” to another. And because of the particular nature of the
installation, the repeating arcs and circles of each panel -- nine in all --
reinforce the symbolism of the lintel, in the architecture of the ancient Near
East, as a depiction of the heavens, traversed by the solar disk. I am most pleased by this synergy between my
art and the building’s architecture. In
close proximity to the sanctuary, I trust that my work will trigger a
conversation between the viewer, the worshiper, and their surroundings, fusing
symbol and object, spirit and substance, and leading to a deeper awareness of
the sanctity of the space which surrounds us a.

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Welcome

This blog provides news and opinion articles about Jewish art, architecture and historic sites - especially those where something new is happening. Developed in connection with news gathering for the International Survey of Jewish Monuments website (www.isjm.org), this blog highlights some of the most interesting Jewish sites around the world, and the most pressing issues affecting them.

About Me

Samuel D. GruberI am a cultural heritage consultant involved in a wide variety of
documentation, research, preservation, planning, publication, exhibition
and education projects in America and abroad.
I was trained as a medievalist, architectural historian and
archaeologist, but for 25 years my special expertise has developed in
Jewish art, architecture and historic sites. My various blogs about Jewish Art and Monuments, Central New York and Public Art and Memory allow me to
clear my email and my desk, and to report on some of my travels, by
passing on to a broader public just some of the interesting and
compelling information from projects I am working on, or am following.
Feel free to contact me for more information on any of the topics
posted, or if you have a project of your own you would like to discuss.

My Lectures & Presentations

“The Stone Shall be a Witness: Strategies for the Preservation and Presentation of Destroyed Structures,” Presentation at International Conference “How to Commemorate the Great Synagogue of Vilna Site?,” Vilnius, Lithuania Sept 4-5, 2017.